Computers have become the lifeblood of modem commerce and are as indispensable today in the management of information as are electric power or telephone service. Few, if indeed any, business or governmental entities are not dependent upon some form of automated information and retrieval system. This reliance has expanded in inverse proportion to the ever-decreasing cost of computer equipment, driven continually downward by the synergistic effects of technological advances, competition and rapid obsolescence. The present explosion of Internet usage testifies to the automated future of global commerce.
There was, however, a mote clouding the vision of the programmers of the Information Revolution, which has now become a plank in the collective eye and imminently threatens to immobilize entire industries. There are a number of cures for this computer cancer, at least in theory, but the certainty of an immutable and rapidly approaching deadline curtails the time available to stem spread of the disease. Indeed, time itself is the problem--or at least, the post-Gregorian method of counting it.